Published: Mar 30, 2008 12:30 AM
Modified: Mar 30, 2008 05:36 AM

## More unrest reported in Tibet

David Barboza, The New York Times
SHANGHAI, CHINA - A group of foreign diplomats, including an official from the United States, completed a two-day visit to Tibet on Saturday, amid conflicting reports of renewed pro-independence protests there and a possible weapons cache and mass arrests at a Buddhist monastery in southwestern China.

Late Saturday, Tibet's government in exile said that there were protests near the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa and that parts of the city were shut down, Reuters reported.

Several Lhasa residents reached by telephone said they heard about a scuffle between police officers and peddlers in a food market. Several residents said they received a text message from the government saying the rumor of new riots was false.

Also Saturday, the Chinese government reported that the police had seized guns, knives and explosives at a Tibetan monastery in Aba, Sichuan province. There have been no previous reports of Tibetan monks or other protesters using weapons in protests this month. The report of weapons found at the monastery could not be independently confirmed.

China's official Xinhua news agency said the police had also arrested 26 suspects at Geerdeng Monastery for "alleged involvement in a riot on March 16." The police said some of the suspects had confessed that the riot "was organized and premeditated, aiming at undermining public order and misleading world opinion so as to sabotage the Olympic Games" in China this summer, Xinhua reported.

The diplomats, who left Lhasa before the reports of protests emerged, did not release their findings, but the State Department said members of the group had not been allowed to hold unsupervised interviews with residents or to deviate from the official Chinese government itinerary.

In Katmandu, Nepal, the police broke up a Tibetan rally Saturday and detained 84 people, Reuters reported. They were demonstrating in front of a Chinese consulate office in the capital.

In Slovenia, European foreign ministers called for an end to repression in Tibet and urged China to hold a dialogue on Tibetan cultural and religious rights, Reuters reported.

The diplomatic tour, which involved envoys from the U.S., Britain, France, Japan and other nations, began as a government-sponsored tour for foreign journalists was just coming to an end.

The Chinese government was embarrassed during the journalists' tour when a visit to the Jokhang Temple was interrupted by monks shouting, "Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!"

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